Don't lay hose in a ditch.

How awesome is it that the shovel AK makes an appearance in Fallout 4? Scope mount, charging handle and safety are all on the wrong side but if you're building it from scratch who cares what side it goes on? It's the apocalypse!

Went to my folks' place for a few days to help them clear brush from the treeline near the house. All of that brown area was full of mostly 1-3" polar saplings and greenbriar, both of which grow amazingly fast. Poplar is very soft so the wood isn't good for much except food for dad's tractor-mounted wood chipper. All of this will grow back in a year or two if it isn't kept down, but in the meantime that little 4' cedar in the center of the pic that is suddenly finding itself bathed in sunlight is gonna get fat and beautiful.

It seems like the deer are huge out here compared to the ones I see in town, and maybe these acorns have something to do with it. These things will make you want to wear a hardhat in the woods. Baby turtle for scale.

My parents officially figured out butternut squash this year. They must have set out some annex plantings because this can't possibly have all come from the two 10x15 raised beds they had for squash. I'm gonna head up there for a visit in a couple weeks and do some recipe experiments. Suggestions welcome!

I planted dill for the first time this year and was pleasantly surprised to see that it grows great from seed. I was also excited to see that the swallowtails found it immediately; I figured it would take a few years of planting dill before they showed up; heck, I've been planting tomatoes for a decade and still haven't see a hornworm.

Anyways, my only choice now is to plant enough to share. Since I pretty much ignored my vegetables this year (didn't even use the dill for pickles) I'm gonna focus on turning the garden into butterfly habitat - dill, milkweed, Joe Pye weed, coneflowers, hyssop, etc. I'll still have plenty of room on the edges for tomatoes. I've never had much luck direct sowing wildflowers but I've been pretty laissez-faire about how I did it - grab a pack of seeds, stick 'em in the dirt, see if they take. I'll give them a little more care this time but I still want perennials that don't require a lot of babying. Wish me luck!

But this was too good to not share - a paper mache Beholder piñata made by one of my college nerd-buddies for one of our other friends, for that friend's surprise birthday party. It was filled with candy, plastic minis, and d20s.

We're trying to make these get-togethers an annual affair since we all moved to different corners of the state after college. Last year was an Air BnB in the Outer Banks and this year it was a little cottage near the York River. Basically a weekend of D&D, board and video games, drinking beer and grilling burgers.

Oh my gosh, look at that wizard. And he's making the sign of the beast!

This is actually worth using during play, though a person could just as easily use the app on their phone without the prop. Pausing a game in the middle of combat always creates problems for immersion in a video game, so I use the Pipboy most often by leaving the "Aid" screen up, and then when I need to replenish health during combat I just take cover somewhere and use the Pipboy instead of pausing the game and going into the inventory menu to find Squirrel Bits and Stimpaks. It's also quicker because I don't have to scroll through dozens of Aid items; I can just leave them pulled up on the Pipboy. The other two items I use most often are the minimap and the fast travel map, which also keep me from having to pause the game.

The amount of content in games these days is insane. I was only a 1/3 of the way through Elder Scrolls Online when I picked up Fallout 4, have barely touched Star Wars Battlefront or Destiny, and now the second Titanfall is coming out...

Took this cellphone pic while on a road trip, which I'll make a post about on a later date.

I've seen and read a lot of Westerns, but I've never heard of this - it's in a place called, cleverly, Post Rock, Kansas, and those larger fence posts in the picture are indeed made of hewn limestone. Weren't a lot of trees around for the early settlers, so they made do. Pretty neat, huh?

It's probably safe to say that 99% of fantasy readers have, at some point, read Terry Brooks. He's prolific and reliable, although the standard critique of his writing would also include "derivative and prosaic". I think readers would be well-served to ignore those critics if they're in need of a fantasy fix. The Genesis of Shannara trilogy is not chronologically first in the massive Shannara series, but it's pretty close. The setting is post-nuclear apocalypse Earth, with a blend of fantasy elements that I thoroughly enjoyed. There are knights and demons and elves but they live and work in secret and the average person would deny their existence. There are breeds of "monsters" as well (Lizards and Spiders and Once-Men), but they're a known threat derived from genetic mutations. The plot is also familiar to fantasy fans: an otherwise unremarkable boy is the world's only hope of salvation from complete destruction by a powerful evil. And that's where the critics start piping up with "derivative!", but who cares? If you like those kinds of stories or are looking to scratch a fantasy or post-apocalypse itch, grab it up - Brooks might not be the best but he won't fail to satisfy.

Whatever You Do, Don't Run was a bit of a disappointment. It's essentially just an undirected series of "war stories" from a safari guide; the time I got a truckload of tourists stuck in the middle of a hippo-infested river, the time I found a snake in the outhouse, the time I scared off a water buffalo with a fart - that sort of thing. He's got some good yarns to tell, he's just not especially good at telling them. I also got the impression that he had a bit of a dude-bro personality, which was not endearing. He's a successful eco-tourism guide and environmental advocate, but his book would have benefitted greatly from a co-writer who could have also listed "author" on their resumé.